Kelsey Merreck Wagner

Name: Kelsey Merreck Wagner

Pronouns: she/her

Studio location: Zionville, North Carolina & Bangkok, Thailand

Website / social links: kelseymerreckwagner.com, @trash_weaver

Loom type or tool preference: 4-shaft Newcomb floor loom; custom tapestry loom, Ashford rigid heddle loom

Years weaving: 7

Fiber inclination: Except for the cotton warp, my weavings are made entirely from plastic bags and recycled materials.

Current favorite weaving book: Textiles of Southeast Asia: Trade, Tradition and Transformation by Robyn Maxwell

Contact information for commissions and collaborations: email address

 

 

1. How did you discover weaving and was what your greatest resource as a beginner?

My undergraduate concentration was in printmaking and ceramics, and while my program did not have a textiles concentration; when I look back at my early artwork, I was always fiber-curious. After learning how to sew signatures and bind book covers during an internship at a book arts center, I became obsessed with the idea of embroidering my prints and making handmade books. This spilled over into my ceramic process when I began making book covers out of clay. After this, I began piercing holes in my pots and started experimenting with ‘sewing’ the pieces together with natural fibers into sculptural installations.

While working on my Master of Arts degree (Appalachian Studies: Sustainability and the Arts) at Appalachian State University, I went to a community festival at Elk Knob State Park, where the Blue Ridge Fiber Guild had a booth with looms and spinning wheels. I was mesmerized by the weaving process, and the guild members invited me to join their free weaving classes at the Western Watauga Community Center, which I started the following week. The sense of community, friendship, and matrilineal knowledge-sharing I experienced at Blue Ridge Fiber Guild got me instantly addicted to weaving. My mentor and now dear friend, Susan Sharpe, has been weaving for over 40 years and is absolutely brilliant. I credit her with everything I know about weaving and to this day she is still teaching me new techniques, lending me books and magazines, providing feedback on surface design, and helping me troubleshoot any issue I throw at her. Being part of a guild is incredible, I especially love the social nature of weaving; there is nothing better than laughing and gossiping with a room full of creative women working at their looms.

2. How do you define your practice – do you consider yourself an artist / craftsperson / weaver / designer / general creative or a combination of those? Is this definition important to you?

This is such a complicated question, and I have a different answer every time I am asked. I am an environmental activist, and my artwork is always about social-environmental issues, so I generally use the term eco-artivist (art + activism). After I explain that, I say I am a weaver/fiber artist, but that doesn’t always cover it because I also make interdisciplinary art across multiple mediums; and I sometimes use the term socially-engaged artist because I center collaboration, education, and community-engagement in much of my practice as well.

The dichotomy between art/craft really irks me, especially when ‘traditional crafts’ are defined as something counter to, less than, or outside of modern and contemporary art.To me, if you make things, you are an artist--no matter the functionality, skills required, technique, tradition, medium, or inspiration. Today’s weaving is the extension of the work of communities of women around the world who perfected looms, patterns, techniques, and designs over thousands of years; but Mark Rothko slaps two colors on a canvas and gets a permanent spot in the Guggenheim? Please.

3. Describe your first experience with weaving.

When I first joined the Blue Ridge Fiber Guild, I was in the process of co-curating an exhibit at the Turchin Center for Visual Arts, titled: Creative Democracy: The Legacy of Black Mountain College. Located outside of Asheville, North Carolina, Black Mountain College was a haven of experimental creativity with the ethos was ‘learning by doing’; and during its short existence (1933-1957) brought together an incredible range of artists, writers, musicians, and scientists. Through the curatorial research process, I read about the work of Anni Albers, who taught weaving there, as well as the work of her many talented students including Ruth Asawa. Learning to weave made such a difference in understanding the skills behind the textiles created at Black Mountain College. Suddenly the descriptions of weaving patterns, techniques, and structures made so much more sense to me, because I was spending hours at a floor loom each week.

One of the key components of Anni Albers’ pedagogy was encouraging her students to reject the rules of weaving and experiment with alternative techniques, often sourcing unconventional materials along with natural fibers collected in the Appalachian Mountains. This would later prove to be incredibly influential on me: years later when the pandemic hit (by which time I was also weaving at home on my rigid heddle loom), I began experimenting with adding plastic bags to my weavings as my stock of yarn dwindled.

4. What is your creative process, from the initial idea to the finished piece? Are there specific weave structures, looms, or fibers that are important to your process?

Because the weft in each of my weavings are made from recycled materials, my creative process relies on the ongoing collection of anything flexible that I can weave with. I collect materials from my household, friends and family, and environmental clean-ups, including things like plastic shopping bags, flagging tape, tablecloths, mesh produce bags, rice bags, feed bags, fertilizer bags, cables and wires, quilting waste, yarn waste, curtains, old clothing, holiday decorations, food packaging, rain ponchos, balloons, bubble wrap, packaging materials, and fishing nets. I then clean the materials, cut them into strips of varying lengths, and sort them by color into large plastic tubs. (If you think this sounds like hoarding…..you are not wrong.)

Though I still occasionally make smaller pieces on my tapestry and rigid heddle looms, my current body of work is large-scale weavings ranging from 20-50 feet long. I use a 4-shaft Newcomb floor loom, which the Blue Ridge Fiber Art Guild generously gifted to me to use in my home studio after we received a surplus of donated looms in our weaving classroom. I keep a large stock of Maysville 8/4 cotton rug warp yarn in my studio and plan the warp by pulling out different color combinations to decide the pattern of the warp and the color palette of the weft. I rarely plan a pattern by counting warp threads: I tend to eschew symmetry and prefer to alternate large chunks of one color with small slivers of others. Once I have warped my loom, I begin by choosing which recycled materials to use and glue the ends of each strip together before winding them onto shuttles. My loom is warped with the Rosepath pattern, but I generally stick to plain weave because I need a stable structure due to the weight of the weft.

Since each strip of material is a different length, texture, and shade, my weft is also asymmetrical and unplanned. I love watching the contrasts and surprises appear on the loom with each pick; and similarly, how they disappear and are forgotten about as I advance the warp. It is such a joy to finish a weaving and pull it off the roller, which usually takes a few minutes because of the length of the warp, and always results in a gorgeous mountain of woven trash on the floor of my studio.

5. Does your work have a conceptual purpose or greater meaning? If so, do you center your making around these concepts?

My ongoing series of weavings use plastic and recycled materials as both a material and conceptual approach/intervention. Every year, 500 billion plastic bags are used around the planet, and after an average 15 minutes of use, these plastic bags pile up in our landfills and clog the green spaces and waterways we share with all other beings on this earth. Even worse, plastic and other waste takes 20-500 years to decompose, and has negative impacts on ecosystems throughout its lifespan. Additionally, waste from food packaging, fast fashion, housewares, electronics, and packaging materials means that everything we buy will eventually contribute to further pollution.

Weaving is a historically place-based, locally specific practice; grounded in the cultivation of local fibers, intergenerational knowledge, and the use of techniques and designs imbued with cultural importance. In this vein, my use of post-consumer waste plastics, fast fashion remnants, and the general refuse of humanity is conceptually significant. My place-based weaving practice then reflects my positionality as an American woman in a post-capitalist country. These weavings represent the neoliberal conditions in which bans on plastic lag behind, recycling is marginally effective, waste management infrastructure is insufficient and overwhelmed; leading to trash escaping into ecosystems or being exported to developing countries.

Collecting recycled materials for these weavings is also an ethnographic project: each environmental clean-up or conversation with family, friends, and strangers donating plastic and old clothes sparks discussion about the plastic problem. It is critical to me that my hopes of raising awareness are not realized in only the final pieces to be exhibited; the exchanges about our consumer behavior, recycling constraints, and environmental stewardship beforehand are just as important.

As an artist who engaged in social practice and community engagement, sharing my process and encouraging others to engage in artivism, especially the younger generations, is also key to my work. Through collaborations, lectures, artist panels, and workshops, I am able to engage with a global community on issues we all care about. I have facilitated a number of environmental clean-ups and trash art projects with university students in the United States, Thailand, and Cambodia. I love seeing what comes out of creative people working together to build solitary to rally against institutional power structures

 

6. What is your favorite part of the weaving process and why? What’s your least favorite?

My favorite part of weaving is my mindset when I get in the flow and an entire day goes by. Weaving allows me the space to get lost in my thoughts, think about new projects, daydream, and strategize what I need to write about next for my dissertation.

Warping my loom is super stressful because I am not a methodical person and am easily distracted. Threading the heddles and reed and tying on is my least favorite part of the process because I inevitably skip a warp string and have to go back and undo tens or hundreds of knots. Weavers often joke that ‘half of weaving is un-weaving’ and that could not be truer for me.

7. Do you sell your work or make a living from weaving? If so, what does that look like and how has that affected your studio practice?

As an emerging artist, my main focus is on creating work for solo exhibitions and site-specific installations. Many of these weavings have been sold to museums, public institutions, and private collectors. In between these projects, I make smaller weavings to sell on my website, and I also do commissioned work, which is especially exciting when I get to work with individuals and organizations who appreciate the sustainable message behind my work.

8. Where do you find inspiration?

Other artists. Nature. Books. Piles of trash. The thought of working a 9-5.

9. What other creatives do you admire – weavers, artists, entrepreneurs – and why?

SO many people. Aside from my art practice, I am also a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at Michigan State University. My dissertation research is about the role of art in environmental movements in Thailand. During my initial fieldwork, I interviewed, collaborated with, and built friendships with so many amazing Thai artists whose work addresses critical issues like climate change, overdevelopment, resource extraction, pollution, human-environment relationships, and extinct and endangered species. As part of the Mekong Culture WELL research team, I had the opportunity to learn from women of the Baan Hat Baai Weaving Co-op in Chiang Rai, Thailand; and I am also a founding member of the ART Worms Mekong Artist Collective. I now spend about half the year in Thailand; at home I share a studio with my husband, who is a painter, and I am still an active member of the Blue Ridge Fiber Art Guild. I consider myself incredibly lucky to interact with artists daily, as it informs so much of my creative process.

10. If you could no longer weave, what would you do instead?

Life without weaving? I would rather dye (pun intended).

Do you have any upcoming exhibits, talks, or events the community should know about?

I am currently working on an ocean-inspired commission for the University of North Carolina-Wilmington Center for Marine Science; planning for an upcoming weaving project with the Jim Thompson Foundation; and preparing work for some soon to be announced exhibits. Please check out my Instagram and website (listed at the top of the article) for updates on my work :)